All posts tagged Roku

If you’ve been waiting to buy a new TV, 2015 may be the year you can actually justify it.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where TV manufacturers unveil their plans each year, I’m seeing fewer gimmicks like 3-D glasses and bendable screens. None of that made sense to people with aging but still perfectly fine TVs.

Instead, Samsung, LG, Sony, Sharp and other big names are working on more noticeable improvements in picture quality and user experience—without breaking the bank. Read More »

This year, Roku’s easy interface and plethora of streaming “channels” will be baked into new TVs from Best Buy’s house brand, Insignia, and China’s Haier. TCL, which shipped four Roku TVs last year, will bring another dozen to market this year, and take the first step towards a 4K Roku TV. Read More »

Google’s Chromecast stick has overtaken Apple’s Apple TV set-top box as one of the most popular Internet video streaming devices in the U.S., according to results of a survey released Tuesday. Read More »

British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC, the British satellite-broadcasting giant, is dipping its toe in Silicon Valley. The firm, which doesn’t operate in America, says it is combing the Valley for start-up investments and commercial deals to future-proof its business and figure out how to get ahead of the global convergence of TV and the Internet. Read More »

Amazon.com introduced its long-awaited set-top box on Wednesday and the big selling points seem to be voice-activated search and gaming capabilities.

That’s a differentiator from Roku, Apple TV and others, which rely on painstaking letter- by-letter scrolling and clicking to search for shows and other content. At an event in New York, Amazon demonstrated how users can speak into the remote control and the device quickly displays relevant content on the television screen.

The Fire TV device also will feature thousands of games, many at under $2, and Amazon will offer a $39.99 controller to play games like “Minecraft.” As well, Amazon introduced a new game called “Sev Zero” for the new device and promised others. Read More »

Roku has managed to build a sizable business in streaming video, despite going up against giants that include Apple. Now its technology and lineup of Internet content services could start arriving in living rooms without a set-top box.

The Silicon Valley startup is using the Consumer Electronics Show to announce Roku TV, an initiative to work with manufacturers to build its hardware and software directly into televisions. China’s TCL and Hisense are the first to take part, Roku says, with the first models expected to be available in the U.S. and Canada this fall. Read More »